tramp farther and farther along the
ridge, and all that patient, trusting army behind, waiting for him to
find more trees! Already the weakest were left behind and stood along
the trails, eying him mournfully; yet work as he would he could not
feed the rest. There was no fine-drawn distinction now--every _palo
verde_ on the hillside fell before his axe, whether it was fine-leaved
and short-thorned, or rough and spiny; and the cattle ate them all.
Mesquite and cat-claw and ironwood, tough as woven wire and barbed at
every joint, these were all that were left except cactus and the
armored _sahuaros_. In desperation he piled brush beneath clumps of
fuzzy _chollas_, the thorniest cactus that grows, and burned off the
resinous spines; but the silky bundles of stickers still lurked
beneath the ashes, and the cattle that ate them died in agony.

Once more Hardy took his ax and went out in search of _palo verdes_,
high or low, young or old. There was a gnarled trunk, curling up
against a rocky butte and protected by two spiny _sahuaros_ that stood
before it like armed guards, and he climbed up the rock to reach it.
Chopping away the first _sahuaro_ he paused to watch it fall. As it
broke open like a giant melon on the jagged rocks below, the cattle
crowded about it eagerly, sniffing at the shattered parts--and then
the hardiest of them began suddenly to eat!

On the outside the wiry spines stood in rows like two-inch knife
blades; but now the juicy heart, laid open by the fall, was exposed,
and the cattle munched it greedily. A sudden hope came to Hardy as he
watched them feed, and, climbing higher, he felled two more of the
desert giants, dropping them from their foothold against the butte far
down into the rocky canyon. As they struck and burst, and the sickly
aroma filled the air, the starved cattle, bitten with a new appetite,
rushed forward in hordes to eat out their bitter hearts. At last, when
the battle had seemed all but over, he had found a new food,--one that
even Pablo Moreno had overlooked,--each plant a ton of bitter pulp and
juice. The coarse and wiry spines, whose edges would turn an axe, were
conquered in a moment by the fall from the precipitous cliffs. And the
mesa was covered with them, like a forest of towering pin-cushions, as
far as the eye could see! A great gladness came over Hardy as he saw
the starved cattle eat, and as soon as he had felled a score or more
he galloped up to Carrizo to tell the news